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Corcoran Gallery of Art
Corcoran Gallery of Art

This provocative exhibition focuses on racial,sexual, and historical identity in contemporary culture and explores artistic influence across generations—bringing seminal figures such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and David Hammons together with Kehinde Wiley, Shinique Smith, and other emerging artists.


  • Margaret and Charles Burroughs started a black history Museum in their Chicago living room with items collected from their travels to Africa. This museum became the DuSable Museum of African American History, the oldest museum of its type in the country. From GREAT MUSEUMS: Riches, Radicals and Rivals: 100 Years of Museums in America (2006)

http://greatmuseums.org/explore/more/black_history_museums_the_dusable.





  • “Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.”Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993


    Click on the link to read more and see the list of her published books,quotes and related videos.
  • “At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough.”


    Toni Morrison

Click on the links to read more about an amazing woman and an exceptional writer and thinker of the African-American community in the US.

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3534.Toni_Morrison


  • A comprehensive list of eminent black poets including associated links to their work and short biographies.

http://www.afropoets.net/


  • A comprehensive list of popular black authors books illustrating a wide variety of genres and literary approaches.

http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/black-authors


  • "All men live in the shadow of their fathers -- the more distant the father, the deeper the shadow. Barack Obama describes his confrontation with this shadow in his provocative autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," and he also persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither."


    By PAUL WATKINS


    Click on the link to read more..http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/06/books/review/06obama-dreams.html

  • Maya Angelou is considered to be among the most accredited authors, poets, playwrights and civil-right activists in contemporary America.Click on the links to know more about her prolific personality and contribution to modern literature. Here is a well-known poem of hers, heart-stirring and overwhelming like all her artistic creations.

"I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS"

  • The free bird leaps
    on the back of the wind
    and floats downstream
    till the current ends
    and dips his wings
    in the orange sun rays
    and dares to claim the sky.

    But a bird that stalks
    down his narrow cage
    can seldom see through
    his bars of rage
    his wings are clipped and
    his feet are tied
    so he opens his throat to sing.

    The caged bird sings
    with fearful trill
    of the things unknown
    but longed for still
    and its tune is heard
    on the distant hill for the caged bird
    sings of freedom

    The free bird thinks of another breeze
    and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
    and the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn
    and he names the sky his own.

    But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams
    his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream
    his wings are clipped and his feet are tied
    so he opens his throat to sing

    The caged bird sings
    with a fearful trill
    of things unknown
    but longed for still
    and his tune is heard
    on the distant hill
    for the caged bird
    sings of freedom.
  • http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3503.Maya_Angelou
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_Angelou
  • http://www.poemhunter.com/maya-angelou/





  • No Child is Born a Terrorist Synopsis


    "What happens when Palestinian youth are given an alternative to a life of violence and martyrdom? Deep inside the most radicalized refugee camp in the Palestinian Occupied Territories, The Freedom Theatre is an outlet for feelings of anger and frustration, where expressions of violence can transform into expressions of art."


    Read more here: The Freedom Theatre